The Cleveland Indians & Director of Scouting BRAD GRANT today announced that PAUL GILLISPIE has been promoted to Assistant Director of Scouting for the club. Paul has been a member of the Indians organization for 2 years, most recently as Area Supervisor for Georgia and South Carolina prior to today’s promotion. In addition to Gillispie, the Indians also internally promoted the following individuals within the organization: CESAR GERONIMO (Latin America Crosschecker); GREG SMITH (Professional Scout), DERRICK ROSS (Upper Midwest Regional Supervisor); BYRON EWING (Area Supervisor for the 4 corners territory - AZ, CO, NM, UT, Las Vegas).

The Indians have also added three individuals into the organization as Area Supervisors, appointing CORTEZE ARMSTRONG as Midwest Area Supervisor (IL, MN, WI, ND, SD) after spending the last two and a half years playing in the minor leagues after signing out of Western Kentucky University in 2006. Also named BRAD TYLER Area Supervisor for Georgia and South Carolina (played professionally for 13 seasons) and JACK UHEY Northwest Area Supervisor (WA, OR, MN, ID, WY, Western Canada). Uhey has been in professional baseball for over 25 years as a pitcher, scout and pitching coach.

So I'm not really familiar with how that works, but is it normal for a player like Corteze Armstrong to be brought on in the scouting department like that fresh off of playing in the organization? That's actually pretty cool, I'm assuming Armstrong is still in his 20's since he came out of College in 2006?

Yeah, they did it last year or the year before with someone. Forget the name, so I'll try to look it up and post. I mean, Atkins went right from a player to the player development staff and is now the head of it. Some guys do get that kind of break.